Fedora Project Considering "Stateless Linux"

Havoc Pennington writes "Red Hat developers have been working on a generic framework covering all cases of sharing a single operating system install between multiple physical or virtual computers. This covers mounting the root filesystem diskless, keeping a read-only copy of it cached on a local disk, or storing it on a live CD, among other cases. Because OS configuration state is shared rather than local, the project is called 'stateless Linux.' The post to fedora-devel-list is here, and a PDF overview is here."

Comments

Re:Looks neat but...

[JPyObjC Dude]

There are dozens but they do not sit in the normal desktop computer realm. Such an architecture would be well suited for low cost server arrays that could run an app like compler, rendering or seti farms.

Once such a system is set up properly, it could be self maintaining with a significant reduction in hardware and energy and maintenance costs.

Re:LTSP

[LincolnQ]

It is intended to be a balance between thin and fat clients. So you have applications stored on the server, but copied and executed locally.

Seems like a good idea to me.

Re:mainframe

[owlstead]

Terminals did not have their own CPU to do things. Here everything is kept local, except the OS install which can easily be managed. Since Linux can work without rebooting for driver installs (which is a necesity in this case) you can even run different kind of hardware on a single install. Basically you now have a flexible, cheap network computer.

And since we cannot do without networking anyway, and since storage devices are easy to make high available, this would seem like a blessing to me.

Re:I want the opposite!

[v1x]

> Isn't this what we blame microsoft for? <

Not quite: we blame them for having to *run* a lot of programs as root to get full functionality. In most *nixes, OTOH, you only need root passwords to *install* programs, while the programs themselves run just fine for regular users.

I dont see anything wrong with having to ask for root passwords for critical changes to any system: its a good practice, and one of the better implementations of it is seen in OS X, which actually has 'Lock/Unlock' icons for settings that need root access.

RTFA, dammit!

[tempest303]

This is NOT just LSTP all over again! RTFA!

From the article:

• Applications run on local systems
• • avoids the needs for huge terminal servers with complex load balancing
  • works for laptops (emphasis mine)
• Software and data are cached on the local disk
• • reduces bandwidth and increases speed
  • the cache can be read-only and thus per-computer state is impossible
  • works for laptops

Re:Looks neat but...

[afidel]

Exactly, this is a lot like windows roaming profiles and network mounted home directories. All the user settings and files move with the user without the drawbacks of terminal servers (of course it also comes with a lot of the drawbacks of disperse workstations). Combine this with network mounted application directories and you have almost as low of a TCO as terminal servers with the power of individual workstations.

Re:I want the opposite!

[Bazzargh]

"I want a distro where by default packages install under $HOME so that someone can install their favorite browser without root access."

Take a look at zero install. You can install 0install on many distros (as root) then install apps as a user exactly like you want.

Or buy a mac!

Re:On behalf of non-geeks, let me be the first to.

[vrmlknight]

same install image will work on a lot of different hardware i.e a laptop with all the power saving features, IDE hard drives and a P4 M processor that same install image will work on a AMD desktop system with scsi drives...

thats it in a nutshell....

Not needing root and thin client hybrid...

[agristin]

If you read the article, you will see that:

1) they don't want users to need root for hardware (but do want users to need the admin to install certain software). This info is in the PDF. They already see that needing root for hardware install or configuration needs to be worked around.

2) the design is a hybrid or amalgamation of thin and fat client, trying to cherry pick the best of both:

applications run on local systems

software and data cached on local disk

central management and configuration of nodes

they call it a cached client technology

3) they have a plan for laptops. Stateless... instantiation, sync... things that sound vague, but they seem to have a plan because this stuff is considered in the howto. There are some notes in the how-to covering the different types of clients:

" diskless clients, which boot directly from a snapshot stored on the server
caching clients, which boot from a copy of a snapshot, cached locally on a hard drive.
Live CD clients, which boot from a copy of a snapshot burned onto a CD
thick clients, which don't use snapshots and must be maintained by another means.
"

The idea has some very cool potential for a business or network situation. I can't imagine this is ready for production, but it could be soon.

-A

Re:Looks neat but...

[drinkypoo]

Even better, use this to eliminate the burden of maintaining all those installs, but use OpenMOSIX clustering. Now, everyone will get all the available performance of all the systems, AND you reduce your administration overhead. Too bad you can't use a 2.6 kernel with o-mosix yet - but that's coming in the next six months to a year. They say that they're aiming to move everything possible into userspace, which will help them achieve their next goal, of splitting architecture-dependent code from everything else. There is still one more release (for kernel 2.4.26) before they get crackin' on 2.6 however. MOSIX has the same problem (plus is x86-only) and is available for kernel 2.4.27.

If this thin client cluster idea appeals to you, please see ltsp-mosix.